As Time Goes By

With just days before the freely elected orange Himler assumes the most powerful office on earth to disassemble the world order from inside, the Camino a Ítaca takes a look back at how eight decades of anti-Nazi propaganda on the silver screen have proven to be no match for the masses of disinformation fed to all through their tiny screens. What was once bad is now good and what was once evil is now accepted. The hundreds of thousands who lost their lives fighting these extreme righ-wing ideals now sleep uneasily as the very real threat of fascism returns. This time not by violence and force, but mire insidiously by fake news and misinformation. Click over to read the published versions both in Spanish in the HOY and in English in the SUR in English. (castellano abajo)

I’m starting to suspect that everything that comes out of Hollywood isn’t quite real. I’ve been there on many occasions, seen the white letters up on the hillside and tripped over the junkies on Hollywood and Vine. So, I know that the place in fact exists. It’s what it has produced that I am no longer certain of.

I’m picturing Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn climbing the cliffs of Navarone. Or maybe something lighter when Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson make a Luftwaffe colonel’s life impossibly complicated as they try to escape.

We don’t even have to reach so far back to find more films on the same theme. We’ve seen Stephen Spielberg direct Liam Neeson in a most harrowing film about a terrible list and Tom Hanks searching for Private Ryan. Or perhaps more recently, Christoph Waltz’s unparalleled quiet, yet menacing depiction of pure raw evil. One that might even approach the heinous malevolence of someone like Reinhard Heydrich in Tarantino’s inglourious remake.

For eighty years Hollywood has churned out constant reminders of the monumental struggle that took place in the 30s and 40s. All are, in their own fashion, depictions of a time when things were remarkably black and white. The false Hollywood narrative of cowboys and indians temporarily replaced by something more easily digestible. On one side we had people fighting for supposed freedom and democracy. While on the other, supporters of authoritarian regimes who had no compunction about sending millions of people who didn’t fit into their mold to their deaths in purpose-built extermination camps from Fuerteventura to Rivesaltes to Birkenau. Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito’s defeat and the subsequent freeing of the concentration camps have flooded our screens ever since.

In Spain however it would take another 40 years. Franco was never toppled He died peacefully in bed with his death marking the beginning of the end to perhaps Europe’s longest dictatorships. At last, the good guys had beaten the baddies and fascism seemed to have finally been put to rest.

But then something happened. It came back.                                 

Four years ago the world watched a violent mob try overturn a free and fair election. Nazi flags were seen flying in the Capitol building of a country that lost 400,000 plus lives fighting the very ideology invading its legislative core. Worse yet, the coup attempt’s leader, Donald Trump, has now been reelected. In Italy, an open supporter of Mussolini now runs the country. At the same time, in the cradles of the most atrocious crimes of the 20^th century, Germany has seen a surge in support for the far right, while in Austria Nazi supporters may form a government.

In Spain, young people blithely sing fascist songs on school outings while more and more women look back fondly on a dark period when they had next to no rights. Regime apologists now sit in all levels of government and in attempts to whitewash the past, the traditional right has joined them in attempts to repeal laws reminding us of past horrors.

In a world where Mayor Stasser has become the good guy and Rick Blaine the bad, you no longer need dystopian movies, just pay attention. Please Sam, don’t play it again.